


Day 8 - Where Did Everybody Go?

by Accal1a



Series: Whumptober 2020 [8]
Category: Among Us (Video Game), Real Person Fiction
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Animal Death, Character Death, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Outer Space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27355744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accal1a/pseuds/Accal1a
Summary: Dr Corvus joins a space mission that they think is going to be the experience of a lifetime. It is...but not for the reasons they think.When the chips are down and people are dying they realise this is about one thing - survival.
Relationships: Dr Corvus & Slid
Series: Whumptober 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949002
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Day 8 - Where Did Everybody Go?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CorvusCloudburst (Cloudburst_Ink)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudburst_Ink/gifts).



> No 8. WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO?  
>  ~~“Don’t Say Goodbye” | Abandoned |~~ **Isolation**

The picture that started it all...

It had started off as a simple space exploration mission, and quickly turned into the nightmare of Dr Corvus' life.

The ship had been tasked with going to do some deep-space exploration, going off to a distant planet to take meteorological readings and samples of the flora and fauna there. 

There was a lot of administration work that was needed in that sort of off-world travel, as well as plenty of science, maintenance, and engineering personnel needed for the long jaunt into the unknown.

Dr Corvus had signed up for an adventure, a way to get off Earth and away from their mundane surgery. It wasn't that they particularly minded their job, but there were only so many burst appendices, broken hands due to drunken fights between opposing football teams, and pieces of Lego up kids' noses that they could deal with without starting to question why they had entered into the medical profession in the first place.

The advertisement that had come up on Facebook one day piqued their interest immediately, and they all-but tripped over themselves opening up the application form.

EXPLORE THE UNIVERSE!

TRAVEL THE STARS!

MEDICAL PERSONNEL WANTED FOR A JOINT LONG-DISTANCE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY WITH NASA AND THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.

APPLY WITH YOUR CV AT THE BELOW WEB ADDRESS.

INTERVIEWS ON JANUARY 4TH 2142.

It really was a no-brainer. Of course they wanted that. 

With no significant other at home to worry about and no children that would wonder why their parent had disappeared for two years, they had signed up and been accepted very quickly. 

Apparently, they had been wrong, this wasn't the chance that tens of thousands of applicants had been waiting for, and they only had to beat out 1,000 people for the position, something that they were quietly very proud of. That was still many people that they had shown they could best in a contest of academia, and that was something they would never take for granted.

They'd worked damn hard for this opportunity, and multiple world governments had put their trust in the ten people who would leave Earth's atmosphere. They weren't going to take that for granted.

~~~

The day of launch was a nervous affair for all involved. 

They had met the crew of the ship before then of course, in terms of all of the many and varied training that they had all gone through. It was part astronaut training and part scientific research training and whilst they had excelled at one, they were only passable at the other.

Thankfully, there were people on the ship who could deal with things like spacewalks and how to keep the actual engine running. All they needed to focus on was medicine. As long as everyone did their roles correctly, everything would be fine.

Famous. Last. Fucking. Words.

~~~

The first few weeks were as normal as they thought an interstellar group of people who weren't all astronauts could be, but then the ship started to fail. One piece at a time like some sort of sick space movie.

It began with small things at first. The coffee maker wouldn't power up one morning, or it zealously filled three cups worth of the stuff when it was only instructed to fill one cup, and then stopped. Someone would look at it, fix it, but the following day…or sometimes even just minutes later, it would fail again.

But hey, they could do without coffee, right?

Sure. 

They'd all be grouchy as fuck, but they could do without coffee. It wasn't like there wasn't caffeine tabs on the ship. Dr Corvus was actually pretty sure that the act of getting a cup of coffee was only habitual at this point, and that the act of drinking it was psychosomatic for all involved. Even they knew that, but they still felt groggy if they didn't have a cup before they started their shift.

After a week or so of the perpetually phoenix-like coffee machine, it got more serious.

Still not massively so.

The garbage compactor stopped working, and it was a daily task to work out what had gone wrong with it. The maintenance people had looked at it and fixed it multiple times, but they couldn't work out why it kept jamming, but still…they dutifully fixed it time after time.

After a while they taught everyone on the ship how to do it so that they weren't called out all the time, which was a damn good job too…because soon the air filtration system needed work done on it.

Again, the crew adjusted to the new normal, freeing up people to fix the new problem, teaching a new cohort of people how to do that fix, because every day it seemed like a new thing was failing, and Dr Corvus spent at least 5 minutes after their alarm had gone off every morning wondering what else would go wrong today, and whether that was the day they all died when the ship had a catastrophic failure of some kind. This isn't what they signed up for.

When the lights went out the following day, they had a sudden and fleeting thought that they had willed the issue into existence, before shaking the idiotic thought free from their brain. No, the ship wasn't failing because they were controlling it like some demented magician. In that thought process lay madness.

They started to treat some on the ship for anxiety, and seriously considered whether it would be a good idea to just start dropping anti-anxiety meds into everyone's coffee.

But then Lale died, and all hell broke loose.

~~~

Not only had Lale died, but she also died of unnatural causes. She was murdered.

The body had been found by Elle, who immediately raised the alarm via the shipboard tannoy via the button in the cafeteria.

The problem was, no-one had been near Electrical where the body was found, and the resulting meeting they'd had to work out the culprit was unhelpful all around. The most important thing to do would be to find out who had been in the area, or even just anyone who was suspicious, to enable them to lock that person away until they were home. For everyone's safety. It wasn't as if they could get rid of the person, certainly not in the middle of space. Where would they even put them?

"Loathe as I am to say this," Captain Caroline said loudly, across the people discussing the issue. "I think we all just need to get back on with our jobs and keep an eye out for any issues in future. We can't just let the entire ship devolve into chaos because one—" She broke off.

Hannah turned on her Captain, with a steely eyed gaze. "What were you going to say?" 

She didn't wait for Caroline to speak, just continued onwards. "Were you just going to say, 'because only one person has died'? Because right now, I think even one person dying is a big fucking deal." She continued, and stormed out of the cafeteria.

There wasn't really anything to say after that.

~~~

Dr Corvus looked over towards Slid, full name Slalegzander Slideon Slugwood, their pet they had brought from Earth with them. The slug had been with them through medical school, through every job they had since, and it was impossible for them to think about going on to the space ship without him too. They had thought that they would have had to fight NASA and the Geological Society of London to allow them to bring the slug with them, but there was no problem there. After all Slid was only a slug.

The Captain had a hamster called Cornelius who followed them around the ship in a small plastic ball, so actually there was no problem at all. 

When they had arrived at the ship, they found that Hannah also had a crab that was with them at all times, so they had never needed to worry about it. They didn't think they would have left Slid behind, but considering the privilege of being able to go into space on this mission, they couldn't say that with complete certainty. Still, it was nice to know they didn't need to worry about it.

After Lale died, people came to see them often. There was an undercurrent of stress and unease throughout the ship, everyone was suspicious of everyone else, no-one was really speaking, and Dr Corvus did think a few times that if it had been them who was the murderer, they would have been able to off everyone in very short order. 

Everyone was on edge, of course, but at the risk of sounding morbid, there was no real time to mourn…for any of them – because the ship still needed to work, and they needed to get on with things. The problems of the ships never ceased, not even for Lale.

Which would have been absolutely fine, even with the new issues with the course correction for the ship and then the holes in the shields, because people were looking after the ship, everyone was banding together and getting things done. It was strained, stressful, and worrying that no-one knew how things would go in the future.

Perhaps Lale had an enemy on the ship, perhaps this had been an isolated incident, perhaps there was no more stress to be had here.

Except then Kory was found in Navigation.

Nearly cut in half.

Then they couldn't ignore the situation anymore. This wasn't just about Lale.

This was a goddamn disaster.

~~~

The meeting that time was fraught with more shouting, finger pointing, and concern from all aboard. Everyone was innocent and no one was innocent.

"Where were you?"

"Where were you?"

"What part of the ship were you in?"

"What tasks were you doing?"

"How many times did you do that?"

"Wait no, I saw you on that side of the ship, how could you possibly on that side of the ship?"

"It wasn't me, I got scared and started to hide in a vent." Hannah said over the top of everyone, wanting to tell people that she was clearly innocent.

The silence that followed after what she had said was deafening.

Everyone looked over at her one after the other, the amount of looks on their faces ranging from angry to stressed to sad to downright shocked out of their minds.

"Morgan? Do you want to talk to her about that?" Aria said after a good five seconds of the silence.

"What? Why?" Hannah said, herself getting really concerned about the way people were looking at her. "Why are you looking at me like that? Haven't you been doing the same? It's the safest way to get around the ship with a murderer on the ship. Don't you think? Why would I walk through the corridors alone right now? Why are you looking at me like that? What did I do?"

"We are looking at you like that," Morgan replied, advancing on the woman, who had started to back away. "Because no-one can get into the vents on this ship..."

"...unless they have something to hide." Aria completed. "So, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"Yes of course they can." Hannah replied, backing up further. The look in Morgan's eyes was murderous and she was really worried about it. "What are you talking about? In fact I'm surprised that more of you haven't been doing so. Wouldn't it make things easier? Do you have a fucking death wish?"

"Do you?" Sly said, moving towards Morgan.

"No. I don't." Hannah said. "What the hell are you all talking about?"

"These ships," Captain Caroline said, "were designed so that the vents couldn't be tampered with. They're made so that all of the maintenance work is done in such a way that they do not need to be entered."

"Did you ever wonder why you needed to go all the way to storage to vent the rubbish into space? Or make sure that you went to O2 to clean the filters? Or even that you needed to download things from the goddamn cafeteria of all places?" Elle carried on seamlessly from where her Captain had been speaking.

"The ship is designed that way so they can't be beset by terrorists. It's designed that way so that no-one needs to go into the vents. It's why everything is spread out. No-one needs to go into them. No-one even can go into them. You need specialised tools, and as far as I know they're tools that need to be created by the ship makers themselves. They are confidential information. There is no-one on this ship that even has one. No-one on this ship who would have any reason to have one. Unless they were here to make the ship fall apart. Unless they were here for some sort of nefarious purpose," Lex continued on, "I was part of the company who made these ships, and even I don't have the ability to open the vents."

"Unless they were here because they needed to murder someone," Aria continued.

"Unless they were here because they had to be here," Captain Caroline continued, "So, the question becomes…what are going to do with you?" 

"I-I-I don't know what you mean." Hannah stammered, hitting the wall with her back, trapped with nowhere else for her to go to, "I haven't…"

"You literally just admitted that you were in the vents," Morgan said. "You have the blood of two people on your hands. You shouldn't be here. We can't trust you anymore."

"So what are you going to do then?" Hannah said, surprising people with her vitriol. "You already know that I can get around this ship without you knowing."

"If you're still on the ship," Sly said calmly.

Elle turned to Sly with a look of complete shock on her face. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying we can't trust her…and there's only one thing that we can do."

That sentence hung in the air for a good ten seconds before anyone spoke.

"I think that might be the only way," Morgan agreed quietly.

"You're talking about murder." Hannah spat out.

"As if that's a concern of yours!" Lex continued, "I think it's the only thing that makes sense."

Eight pairs of people's eyes looked towards Captain Caroline, who stood there looking at everyone in turn. Then they nodded.

"I can't be a part of this," Dr Corvus said, her slug looking mournfully towards Hannah as well, as if it knew exactly what was about to happen.

Morgan and Lex moved towards Hannah and bodily held her with their strong arms, strong-arming her towards the nearest airlock.

Hannah put up a struggle, but couldn't fight against the two women. "You're going to regret this, Caroline!" She shouted. "You don't want someone's blood on your hands. You're not going to be able to live with yourself once I'm gone! You'll never be able to sleep again!"

Captain Caroline forced herself to watch as the woman was dragged out of the room, knowing that they had to be strong for their crew, knowing that they had to be part of the decision, they had to show their strength. Their unity.

She followed them out towards where the nearest airlock was, and noticed that the rest of the crew were following as well. She guessed that this was one of those unprecedented situations where everyone needed to be a part of it.

When Hannah was pushed into the airlock, she stumbled, but turned and continued to spit words at everyone, screaming about their idiocy, telling them that Lale and Kory had deserved to die.

Captain Caroline moved forward, and pressed the button that would open the airlock to space. The lights flashed to warn anyone who was in the area that the airlock was about to open. When it was almost there, and the vacuum of space was about to swallow Hannah whole, she started to speak again.

"You think I was the only one?" Hannah shouted over the noise as she was ejected into space, far too late for anyone to stop the airlock opening and ask her who they meant.

Morgan turned to Lex, speaking quietly. "I think we're fucked."

"What a mood." Lex replied.

~~~

Unbeknownst to the crew who were still alive, the ghosts of Lale and Kory continued to move about the ship, completing the tasks that they would have had in life. 

If members of the crew were surprised that tasks they would or should have been doing were not ones they needed to, they didn't say anything. After all, there were bigger fish to fry. They had enough to worry about.

"Who killed you?" Lale asked Kory when they met up in Electrical one day.

"Hannah, I think." Kory replied. "To be honest I'm not sure, because I was too focused on the uploading of data I was doing in Navigation when I was stabbed."

"I'm not sure who got me either," Lale replied, sighing, "I guess we'll find out."

"I guess we will." Kory responded.

~~~

Hannah's crab, Cyril, seemed to be taking her death just as badly as some of the rest of the crew. It lay there, not moving, only breathing, on the floor of the cafeteria where Hannah had been when the shouting started.

Captain Caroline's hamster, Cornelius attempted to get Cyril to move, but failed, and Dr Corvus' trusty slug, Slid also tried to get him to move, but nothing could be done. It was as if he had lost all desire to exist without its owner. All it did was sit there, legs splayed and breathed. 

A living reminder to both the crew and the pets of what they had done, of the blood they had on their hands, but it had been necessary, they had to do so. Right?

It didn't mean they felt good about it though. 

~~~

The second imposter let the crew think that Hannah had been talking rubbish before she had been ejected into space. They wanted the crew to think that it was over, that they were safe.

Then they wanted to show them all that they were wrong. 

Dead wrong. 

~~~

Days went past, people got on with their tasks, re-organised their lives into a new normalcy, and tried not to think about what they had done. It had been necessary they rationalised. It was them or her. They needed to just move on, continue with the mission.

After a week, with everyone skirting around each other, but still getting their tasks done, a week where people moved around each other, left rooms when people entered out of fear that they would somehow be next, the communications went down…and stayed down.

Every time it was fixed, it failed again.

They tried to think that it was merely the ship failing, that when they fixed the issue, they didn't really fix it. They thought that they needed to keep trying, but deep down the seven remaining people on the ship knew that there was someone else among them who had it in for the crew. 

It was only a matter of time before someone else died, or the ship catastrophically failed, and they all died together.

Everyone was on the edge, fearing that any one of them would snap at any minute. People began to barricade themselves in their rooms at night, or if they were on a break, but forever, in the back of their mind was the thought.

Hannah used the vents to get around.

Which meant someone else could be doing so as well. 

No-one was safe anywhere on the ship. Anyone could be there to sabotage their mission. The only thing they could do was keep the ship running as best as possible until they got to Mira HQ, and hope that there was enough of a crew at that outpost to help them find the imposter on the ship. If they couldn't do that, then they were screwed. Completely. Fucking. Screwed.

~~~

"It's the Captain," Lex said when she cornered Sly in the corridor one day.

Sly had jumped back away from her, as if Lex were about to stab them in the middle of the brightly lit section of the ship. 

"Sly, dude. It's me. What do you think I'm going to do? Throw this coffee on you?"

Sly backed up further, "Just stay on that side of the corridor, and I'll stay here. We can talk like this."

Lex personally thought that Sly was being overly cautious, but she did what they said.

"What do you mean, it's the Captain?" Sly said after Lex had taken a sip of coffee. "You think Caroline murdered Lale and Kory?"

"No" Lex said, with a supreme level of calm that Sly hadn't seen in a while. Either Lex was actually evil and was about to stab them in the middle of the corridor, or they were perfectly fine…in which case they had absolutely no right to be this calm in this situation. "The Captain. She's missing. No-one has seen her for hours."

"This is a big ship, Lex" Sly reminded slowly.

Lex gave Sly a look that would rival any school teacher, "Gee Sly, I wonder what I could have possibly done before bringing this to your attention. Do you think maybe I could have checked the ship for the woman before I went to find people? Do you think maybe I would have looked absolutely everywhere before I started putting myself in danger by hunting people down, chatting to them in corridors, potentially getting stabbed by the people who I was coming to consider were friends?" Lex said, her characteristic sarcasm having a biting quality to it that was normally not quite so pronounced.

Sly raised their right eyebrow and smirked "Hunting? Really?"

"Poor choice of words," Lex admitted, "But the fact still remains. Caroline is missing, or at least incapacitated somewhere. We need to go and search for her…and there's safety in numbers, right?"

Sly stared at Lex for a long time, wondering whether they could trust her, wondering whether this was about to be their doom.

"Okay," They said finally, but then caught Lex's arm as they started to walk away, "If you murder me, I'll kill you."

"Fair." Lex replied as they walked off down the corridor.

~~~

As they walked the length of the ship, they didn't speak, still wary about the other person, and unsure if there was really anything that they could say.

"You ever think that maybe we have the wrong profession?" Sly said after a while.

"What, you didn't want to study for years, get a job on a research ship crossing the stars, and then get brutally murdered?" Lex replied, taking another sip of their coffee.

Sly smiled ruefully.

They were so fucked.

~~~

They didn't find Captain Caroline first, which somehow made the whole thing so much worse. The idea that she might be dead somewhere on the ship but unfound put a chill up Lex's spine.

When the tannoy went off, calling everyone to the cafeteria, they just instinctively knew that a body had been discovered. They looked at each other grimly, and turned in that direction.

As they got closer, they could already hear the shouting, hear the accusations flying through the air, and they steeled themselves for what was going to happen.

"It's Sly! I'm telling you!" Elle was shouting at everyone assembled. "I haven't seen them for ages!"

"Sly's been with me for ages," Lex said into the silence that followed as they walked into the room from the corridor outside weapons. 

"Yeah it's been hours. If I'd wanted to kill Lex, I could have done it a thousand times."

"Exactly, and vice versa. I don't think it's them." Lex continued when Sly had stopped.

That seemed to take the wind out of Elle's words somewhat, and they dropped into silence.

"Right," Aria said, "Then who the fuck is going around murdering people on this ship?" 

"Do we think Hannah was right? Is there definitely someone else who is part of the problem?" Sly piped up.

"Well I think Morgan's dead fucking body would prove that don't you think?" Dr Corvus retorted, speaking up for the first time.

"Yeah, that would do it," Elle said snarkily, "Who the fuck could possibly have thought we still had a problem? I am completely shocked."

"Well I didn't know we'd found a body, did I?" Sly snapped. "The tannoy just went off for a meeting!"

"Well why would I have called an emergency meeting if we didn't have a body?"

"I don't know! Maybe there was some pertinent information you'd found about Hannah and you wanted to share it—"

"And that would be worth calling a specific meeting and not just sending out an email?" 

"Well I don't know people call meetings for all sorts of reas—"

"GUYS!" Aria shouted. "This isn't helpful." 

"Well what do you suggest Aria? Because right now I'm ready to sus the lot of you and then hide in my quarters for the rest of the journey."

There was silence after Elle's final speech, and people turned to look at her.

"You want to hide away for the rest of the time to Mira HQ?" Lex questioned quietly.

"Er...yes? There's a fucking murderer on this ship! Hadn't you noticed? Did you want me to send out another email?" Elle said, red in the face and fuming at the fact no-one seemed to be taking this seriously.

"You're sounding pretty sus yourself, Elle." Dr Corvus said with a hint of trepidation. "You're throwing around an awful lot of accusations, with very little information to back it up. Lex and Sly were together. Aria and I were working on the reactor after it almost melted down. So, where have you been?"

"I was working on shooting out all of those asteroids in the field we just entered." She said, looking between each of the four people who were standing there, all looking at her with trepidation and a bit of hardness to their features, which turned the faces into somewhat of a horror in and of themselves.

"You weren't in Weapons when we went through there a minute ago," Lex retorted coolly, "We would have seen you."

"Well I did asteroids, then I went down to O2 to clean the air filtration system." Elle said, starting to worry a little at the way people's eyes seemed to narrow at that comment.

"We had to walk down that corridor, Elle," Sly said, "You weren't there."

"And there's a vent in Weapons." Aria said slowly.

"Everyone knows that vent goes to Nav!" Elle said loudly, trying to work out if there was a way out of this disaster. Even she knew that she was sounding sus to the people who were likely ready to shove her out of the airlock.

"I didn't know that," Lex said, turning to Aria, "did you?"

"No. I didn't. There's only one way she could possibly have known that."

Sly did, in fact, know that the vent went to Nav from Weapons, they'd seen the schematic of the ship, and they knew where the majority of the vents went…but they certainly weren't going to speak up and let anyone know that. That would be dumb.

"If Caroline isn't here, who—" Lex started.

"Majority rules Sly said quietly.

"What? No! It's not me! I promise!" Elle said, backing away from people she considered to be friends. "I wouldn't kill anyone! Why would I even do that? No…guys. I know it's one of you! It can't have been me."

"You were the only one not with someone else," Aria pressed, "come up with a better alibi and we'll keep talking, we'll work this out.

"I-I don't." Elle stammered, "I don't know what else you want me to say! I was doing the things the ship needed. I was doing my job! I wasn't fucking going around murdering people!"

Aria looked to Sly, then Lex, then Dr Corvus, grimly; holding each of their gazes for a few seconds.

Lex nodded finally when no-one else spoke. "Majority rules."

"No," Elle breathed, even as Sly and Lex approached her and took her arms. "No! It's not me! This is a mistake!" She cried as she started struggling, attempting to get away from the firm grips encircling her. "You're wrong! You're all going to die! Don't do this!"

"Threatening us even as she is dragged away," Dr Corvus said, completely exhausted, "I think we've made the right choice."

Aria nodded. "I do too," She sighed, a weight settling in her chest, "come on, we should be there."

Dr Corvus nodded as well, straightened their shoulders as if they were steeling themselves – which in all honesty they were – and moved along towards the airlock, Elle's cries echoing in their ears.

Aria ended up pushing the button, which was a mercy for the other survivors. They had unofficially deferred to her leadership in the absence of Captain Caroline.

They all grimly watched as Elle, and her pink spacesuit, were jettisoned into space. When they could no longer bear to watch her, they all turned, almost as one, and went back to their tasks.

"And then there were four," Lex exhaled to herself once everyone had dispersed. "Fuck my life."

~~~

"Do no harm," Dr Corvus repeated as they slammed into their quarters and locked the door, "do no fucking harm."

They threw themselves into their chair, then carefully put Slid onto the table in front of them. He looked up at them with his one eye, as if to ask them what was wrong.

"What am I supposed to do, Slid?" They asked mournfully. 

Slid didn't answer, so they continued on, alone and restless.

"I know that it wasn't me who pushed the button, but I was part of that meeting. I helped to kill Elle. Even if she was a murderer, I'm not supposed to do that. That's not what doctors do. We're supposed to preserve life as much as possible."

Slid moved slightly closed towards Dr Corvus, and they absently reached out a hand to pet the animal.

"I don't know. I guess if Elle was the other person killing people then I have saved lives. But what if they weren't? What if they were telling the truth and we just pushed an innocent woman out into space? What if we were wrong?"

Slid moved even closer, sliding onto Dr Corvus' hand which was on the table as if to give them as much support as possible.

"What would you have done?"

Slid slithered up Dr Corvus' shirt sleeve, leaving a slimy trail on the clean white fabric.

"I know, I know. We'll just have to see how things pan out," they continued, stroking their pet for a moment, "I'm scared, Slid. I hope we were right, but I'm worried we were wrong. I guess we'll find out and I'll have to live with that."

~~~

Sly didn't see anyone for the longest time, just keeping their head down and getting on with their tasks. They were used to keeping careful watch to where they were, making sure that there was no-one in the rooms they went into, kept half an eye behind them as they were continuing on with their tasks, but they couldn't stay safe all the time.

The brief reprieve was over when they thought they heard a noise from the corridor outside of their quarters. 

It was the steady clink and clonk of something mechanical moving…or maybe someone moving on something mechanical and deep down they knew what that meant.

There was no way to get out of their quarters without going out into the corridor, and if this were going to be their last stand then they would go down fighting. They would always go down fighting.

In the end, it wasn't enough. It would never have been enough. The imposter was too damn good at their job.

~~~

"I think Lex reported the body after they'd killed them," Aria theorised calmly when the tannoy had gone off again and they were all standing in the cafeteria, "You said you didn't think they'd been dead for long."

"Well no," Dr Corvus admitted, "but that doesn't necessarily mean that Lex killed them."

"Are you saying it was me?" Aria asked incredulously.

Dr Corvus looked between Aria and Lex not knowing who to trust. Not anymore. There was just so much that they didn't know.

"Well it wasn't me!" Lex cried. "I've been fighting with the reactor for the last hour or so. I flat out couldn't have killed them. You're talking shit."

"I haven't seen you for ages, Lex. Aria's got a point." Dr Corvus confessed into the encroaching silence.

"Are you kidding me here? I haven't fucking killed anyone. Why would I kill anyone? I have nothing to gain here."

"I don't know what you're playing at, Lex. It seems pretty clear that you killed Sly. I don't know why you did it, but you're not going to get away with this." Aria continued, shaking her head.

"I helped you decide to get rid of people who we thought were the perpetrators of the issues! Why the fuck would I have done that if I were in cahoots with them?" Lex retorted in the same tone of voice, knowing that if they didn't explain this properly, they would be going out of the airlock. Just like Hannah. Just like Elle. She would be a statistic on a form somewhere, a line on a report that would be filed away and probably never looked at again. She didn't even know if they would contact her next of kin if they considered her a traitor. Maybe she'd just be seen as a necessary causality of the mission failure.

A set of pixels would be the last thing that anyone ever saw of Lex. What a fucking joke.

"Okay fine," Aria said coldly, "But we'll keep our eyes on you."

"Right back at you," Lex spat and stormed out of the cafeteria, alone.

Dr Corvus sighed as they walked back to Medbay and to their analysis of some of the samples that would be used to make chemical reactions on things that they were going to find on the floating platform they were travelling towards. Hopefully, the people there would have something interesting to experiment on. It would be horrendous if they'd come all this way and had nothing to show for it.

Seven dead crew wasn't an acceptable loss under any circumstances, but seven dead crew and nothing scientifically gained would be an all-out tragedy…and wasn't something that bore thinking about.

~~~

"Mira HQ this is Skeld, do you copy? Over." Dr Corvus said as they managed to get into Admin on the last day. They were concerned they wouldn't even make it to the room, but they managed to run towards the room when they heard Aria walk the other way down the corridor. 

Aria, Lex, and they had been the last three on the ship, but then they had found Lex dead, and they knew with certainty that it wasn't them. So it had to have been Aria. After all this time, after all their conversations, it was Aria. They'd fall apart about that later, but right now they needed to warn the observation station. They needed to make them aware of the situation, so the same thing didn't happen there. They had a duty of care to ensure no more lives were lost.

"Mira HQ copy, go ahead. Over." A voice filled with static came over the line, and Dr Corvus had a second of hysteria thinking how they were on a multi-million dollar spaceship and they still couldn't get the comms working correctly.

"We have a Code Purple situation aboard the ship. I repeat we have a Code Purple situation aboard the ship. Docking time in 2 hours. Please confirm. Over."

"Please confirm. You are reporting a Code Purple? Over."

Before Dr Corvus pushed the button to continue the call, the radio stopped working. The silence in Admin one that they immediately felt down to their entire bones. This wasn't good. They needed to get out of there, go to Comms, fix the issue, and then try again. They needed to…

"Oh I really wish you hadn't done that." Aria's chilling voice came from behind them, entering the room and then closing the door with a woosh.

Dr Corvus spun slowly towards the woman, backing up a step before they instead held their ground. "Aria. It was you." They said quietly, their heart heavy with the weight of the knowledge that their friend could do something like that. Then again…Hannah had been her friend too.

"Seems like it," Aria said, locking the door, "you were so sure it was Lex. So sure that after everything we had been through that she was sus, but boy were you wrong. How does it feel to know you helped to eject people from the ship who didn't deserve it? How does it feel to know that Elle and Sly died not because of anything Hannah or I did? That you have their blood on your hands and not mine? How does it feel to know that you maybe could have stopped me if you'd kept them around? How does it feel to know you'll die a sinner?"

Dr Corvus made sure to stand up straight and look Aria in the eye. If they could keep her talking maybe they could get out of this, maybe this wouldn't have to end in a total mission failure.

"Why, would you do this?" Dr Corvus said firmly but without a great volume, baiting Aria to keep talking for as long as possible. To play for time so they could think of something.

Aria shrugged before she spoke. "Why does anyone do anything in this world?"

"Is it money? Because you don't seem the type to be swayed by that."

Aria scoffed. "You don't know anything about me. I think that's painfully clear, don't you? If you bothered to get to know me properly, maybe things would have turned out differently."

Dr Corvus smiled grimly. "Yes, maybe we would have pushed you out of an airlock after all."

"It wasn't the money, not really." Aria said, advancing on Dr Corvus slowly. "It helped, but really it was about this company, and what they were doing to people, to the worlds they were planning on terraforming, to the colonisation that would inevitably happen. I honestly don't know how you can live with yourself working for them."

"We're going to learn about so many planets, so many ecosystems, it'll help countless studies and advance science on Earth." Dr Corvus replied, but it sounded empty even to their own ears.

"If you believe that, you're more naïve than I thought. Think about all scientific advancements on Earth, think of all the countless lives they failed before they flourished. Can you really say, without a trace of guilt, that you want to subject the rest of the universe to that sort of cruelty?"

"It won't—" Dr Corvus started, before Aria cut her off.

"Yes it will. You know that, you're just too cowardly to admit it. I'm going to be doing you a favour." Aria finished, stopping in front of them.

Dr Corvus cast their eyes around the area they were in, but short of trying to knock the woman out with a stylus or some pens, there was nothing there.

"There's nothing here that can help you, Corvus. It's just you and me now…and soon it will just be me."

Dr Corvus put their right hand in the pocket of the lab coat they were wearing, grasping the small syringe in their hand. They flicked the cap off the needle, and pulled it out.

Aria laughed. "What are you going to do with that?"

"You'd be surprised." Dr Corvus replied. "Science Officer, remember?"

"You don't have the guts."

"You underestimate me." Dr Corvus said, and landed a perfect left hook across Aria's jaw, jabbing the syringe into the woman's thigh with her right hand, and depressing the plunger.

Aria's head snapped to the side, but she recovered quickly, pulling the needle from her skin, and throwing it to the side. She was already feeling a little woozy, had no idea what she had been dosed with, but she wasn't going down without a fight.

Dr Corvus looked slightly shocked that Aria was still standing, and it was that moment of indecision that caused their downfall. 

Aria took the serrated knife that she had been holding and stabbed it into Dr Corvus' side, twisting it to inflict maximum damage.

Dr Corvus gasped out a soft breath, the pain shooting up their abdomen seeming to take all the air from their lungs. Even before they'd looked down to see the wound, they knew it was fatal. Aria clearly knew what she was doing. They laughed internally, of course the woman fucking knew what she was doing. Everyone on the ship was dead.

"Why?" They finally said, as they fell to the floor, a hand to the wound, even though they knew it would make no difference, holding it was soothing in a way.

"You'll never know." Aria said, finally succumbing to the numbing effects of the sedative racing through her system.

Dr Corvus thought that might be the most tragic thing of all.

~~~

It turned out Dr Corvus lived for long enough that Aria awoke from the sedative. She looked for them immediately her lip curling into a smile. "Still with me?"

"Fuck. You." Dr Corvus responded. They knew they didn't have long now, knew that this would be it, they were dead.

"No thanks." Aria said, picking them up and carrying them towards the airlock. 

Dr Corvus struggled a little, but the blood loss had sapped their energy. What did it matter whether they died of lack of blood or from the void of space? It was all the same journey in the end.

The doorway seemed to take both an age to get to and be over in a second.

"Any last words?" Aria said, carefully placing Dr Corvus down on the floor in the airlock in a mockery of concern. Somehow that was worse than if she'd dropped them.

"May you live in interesting times." Dr Corvus said. They'd always liked the apocryphal Chinese curse, and it seemed very fucking apt in this situation.

Aria laughed as if that was the most amusing thing she had heard in ages, and walked away, closing the airlock door with a hiss. 

She looked through the window at the broken person on the floor, blood long since stopped gushing from the wound and smiled again.

Mission accomplished, she thought, as she lifted the flap that covered the buttons, she would need to finish this.

The red button depressed, and the warning claxons went off, flashing the red light inside the airlock.

Aria watched as the exterior door opened, causing a vacuum that sucked Dr Corvus out into space.

Dr Corvus had less than a minute to think about their lot in life, musing about the fact that they had decided to join this crew, and do something more with their life than just general practice. General Practice looked damn good right about now.

They wished they didn't know precisely how their body would fail in the depth of space. Being a doctor was sometimes a truly thankless profession. They knew that they would have longer than someone ejected out of the ship without a space suit, but that didn't mean they would be alive for long. 

No, this was it.

~~~

Aria walked back into Admin and looked down at Slid, scooping him up into her arms. The slug shuddered, but couldn't get away from her firm grip. If Slid was honest with himself, he didn't even really care. He felt bereft without Dr Corvus.

Aria then walked into the cafeteria and picked up Cyril the crab from the floor where he had been left, still merely breathing and sad since Hannah's death. Lex's dog, who had never been given a name by either Lex or anyone else on the crew, was next. 

Storage was closest, so Aria walked there, easily pushing the morose pets into the trash shute. 

"I hope you find your owners." She said darkly, pulling the leaver to jettison them into space.

She'd find Cornelius the hamster later and give him the same treatment, if she could find the bastard. It had been in a ball when Captain Caroline had died, and since then it had been rolling around the ship, and she only saw it every other day.

She had no need for pets. If she found him, she found him. If not, well…it was unlikely a balled hamster would last long. Maybe the ship would do her job for her.

~~~

The last thought that Dr Corvus had was due to Slid moving towards them. They opened their arms to hold him, just one last time.

The advertisement had been right, they thought sardonically, as they closed their eyes for the final time.

They really were travelling the stars.

~~~

Aboard the ship, Aria turned the vessel towards Polus instead. Mira HQ may now be on alert, and good as she was, she didn't think she'd be able to talk her way out of nine people being dead when they'd already had a Code Purple warning.

Polus, on the other hand, wouldn't be an issue. It was too far out of the way for anyone even at Mira HQ to think to have warned them. It was an outpost so remote that most people forgot it even existed, and she would use that to her advantage. Thinking on it further, she wasn't quite sure if it was an outpost that was even in the official records. She thought she might have heard some chatter, when she was planning the sabotage of the current mission, about it being somewhere that few people had the clearance to even know about.

She smiled, watching the stars out of the window, seeing the white spacesuit out of the corner of her eye as the ship powered in the direction it needed to go.

Polus. She couldn't wait to get there.

**Author's Note:**

> Fancy joining a multi-fandom Discord server where you can ~~squee with~~ chat with like minded people? Have I got the place for you!
> 
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